Sorry about the falling off the face of the earth and coming back briefly. Long story short I got lazy and didn’t feel like keeping up the blog and everything else that occurs in my every day life!

Baby girl is 8 months old. She wants to crawl Sooo bad!! She is our little lady whose personality is completely contagious. She is happy, has a smile for everyone, and is very observant.

We moved! We bought a home in my hometown. We love it and and after about 6 weeks things are finally starting to settle down.

I continue to work 4 days per week which is still considered full time.
Here is some pictures. I hope everyone is doing well. My little IVF miracle is a busy little lady and I don’t like to miss anything 😜

To fully put down in words how I feel on our nations choice of leader will be impossible. I pray that we will move forward not backwards. I pray that hate will not prevail. I pray that we did not just go back in time in progress of racism.

This will be an interesting 4 years.

I will focus on my family, faith, and health.

On another note, I go back to work on Monday.

So I am soaking up all the time, cuddles, and love I can. Where did the time go?

Breastfeeding is going wonderfully. I have been producing milk and pumping since I was about 40 weeks pregnant. Yes, that is right, I have been producing breastmilk and pumping it prior to the birth of my daughter. I have a proximately 6 ounces of colostrum stored in the freezer. And I have now over 200 ounces of breast milk stored in the freezer. Lily took to breast-feeding pretty quickly and we did not struggle too much. The first two weeks were definitely painful with learning how to get her latched and toughening up my nipples however since then it has been a glorious journey. Since I will be going back to work in the middle of November I have been pumping at least once a day typically in the morning so I can continue to build my breast milk stash. This morning was a record morning. This morning after feeding Lily I pumped another 15 ounces! I feel very blessed to have this excessive amount of breastmilk. I am glad I am able to provide Lily with the best food that is created uniquely for her.

7 weeks ago Lily joined our family. It has been an amazing 7 weeks. I have been exhausted beyond belief. However, I wouldn’t change it. I have only had a few moments when I was utterly exhausted in the middle of the night where I thought to myself that I love you little girl but I don’t like you right now. Those moments and thoughts quickly vanquished. She has become a better sleeper of the night. She is a breast feeding champ. She knows how to capture your heart with a beautiful smile. We love her and love our new little family. Charlie, adjusted immediately. To be honest he was a bigger pain in the butt when I was pregnant than he is now. I think he knew something was up because seriously. As soon as we were home with her, he chilled back out.

7 weeks in, I find that I don’t like to share her much with other people for a long period of time. I’m just not ready. Who knows if that will ever change. I also don’t know if this a first child thing / feeling, or is it the infertility in me.

We are sleeping better now. I have had one glorious 8 hour night. Otherwise we are now averaging 4-6 hr stretches at night.

She loves to cuddle up when she is ready to sleep. However, when she is ready to play she wants to be down on the floor on her play/gym observing the world.

She is easily soothed. The only meltdowns that have occurred are in the car seat and if she is even slightly hungry. That is getting better though. Or maybe mom and dad are learning her schedule a little better. Either way.

She is quickly growing and changing before our eyes. I weighed her at my post partum check and she weight 11.1lbs! She is in mostly 0-3 month clothes with some 3 month clothes. It all depends on the brand.

She is a breast feeding champion. I pump on average once a day to build a stash. I love the Kiinde system. She takes a bottle well from her Daddy. She is downing 4oz like a champion.

In 2 weeks we have her 2 month well child check and she will get her vaccines. I am pro vaccines. I am a family nurse practitioner. Don’t try and tell me why you believe they are bad. I will de-bunk your theories.

And finally she LOVES to be held and worn. We get a lot of use out of the Moby as well as the Ergo 360.

A little about me:

Postpartum: I had a 2nd degree tear. I would say it took a good 5 weeks to feel better in the perineum. I am still dealing with painful BMs due to some internal hemorrhoids. I am down to my pre-pregnancy weight and now working on slowly losing to get down to what I call pre-trying to conceive weight…. Yeah, that is about 35 lbs away. My first goal should be to achieve my pre-infertility weight which is closer to 20 lbs away. I’ve done it before. I will do it again.

Hope all is well. I know I have been silent for awhile. But honestly if you have been following my blog for awhile you should expect that from me.

I went into the hospital at 41 weeks to be induced. Going into the hospital I was about 30% effaced with no dilation. I was hooked up to the fetal monitor and basically hung out. I was started on Cytotec one dose every 8 hours… for the maximum number of doses… Nothing changed. Cervix is proving to be difficult.

I went down to have a BPP done to see if Baby was doing well. Here we discovered the my fluid level was on the low end of normal (totally expected at 41+2 at this point) So no going home to rest for me, I’m at the hospital to have a baby.

Next step. Pitocin at low dose to see if I will start to see some changes in my Cervix this way. Pitocin slowly increased at 8mg I was contracting but nothing crazy painful. So I went for a walk around the unit. I was doing full walking lunges… Contractions disappeared. Got back to bed. Increased Pitocin to 10mg. Now we are getting somewhere. I was on Pitocin for 6 hours total.

Check Cervix: I AM FINALLY 1 cm dilated WHOOP! (This was amazing, because if this did nothing, I was going to end up with a c-section)

I was allowed to rest for a couple hours and then came the balloon. I will say that this was very painful. I was on my back in a reverse trendelberg (head lower than feet) The Midwife and an OBGYN along with a nurse were in my room and inserting balloons into my cervix to apply pressure and assist in opening my cervix. The catheter gets inserted through my cervix and the first balloon is filled then another balloon is filled on the other side of the cervix.

This was inserted at 9 pm saturday 8/27. Pitocin remained off for the time being. I took some visteral and morphine at this point so I could rest.

2am, I rested some but was now experiencing some pretty painful contractions. So like a lady I puked. I called in the nurse and told her that I thought things were moving along and that we might as well re-start the pitocin. I also asked at this point to get an epidural.

***Side note: I did not write a birth plan. Working in healthcare I know that there are so many things out of your control and writing down my plan would have just made me disappointed that it didn’t go to my plan. I wanted to go into labor naturally, labor at home, get to the hospital, labor some more, then get in the water birth tub and magically have this baby… Obviously that is not what happened.

There was some other drama happening on L&D that night so I labored with the Pitocin until 6am. My labor pain was low pelvis and thighs. When I did get out of bed to use the bathroom from 2am to 6 am I could barely walk. (There went my idea of walking out my labor). At 6 am the most amazing man came into my room. The Anesthetist. AKA the amazing epidural man. I had the perfect epidural. I could move my legs and assist with turning. I could still feel my contractions but they were not painful any more. I could rest. I had been basically in bed/ confined to a 5 foot radius for 3 days going on 4. I was done. I wanted to be done. I had also continued to vomit several times due to the pain.. It was fun for all…

After my epidural was placed the midwife came in and check my balloon catheter. I was 4cm and 100% effaced!!! The balloon was taken out and I was left to rest.

at 9:45am I started to feel a lot of pressure. I was checked again and I was complete. I was left to labor down for a couple of hours. At 11:45 we started the pushing party! (oh another note I puked again right before started pushing) I pushed for 45 min and my perfect daughter came into the world. It was a wonderful surprise to wait to find out what were having. It was truly an amazing blessing.

Overall getting into labor was the long and annoying process. My body just was happy to stay pregnant. However, if I had not started the induction process when I did, I most certainly would have had a C-section. I had patient staff that allowed me to try everything to achieve a vaginal birth as long as it was safe for me and her. I wouldn’t change our birth story. It is our story and it is a good one. Once I was in labor it went quick. Which I am thankful for.

I was in the hospital for just under 100 hours. Lily was in the hospital in the outside world for 31 ish hours.

She passed everything with flying colors except for the heart test (the O2 test). We did have to stay for her to have a cardiac echo. She passed this without a problem. I was not stressed or worried about this because I could tell that she was doing fine. (I also had a stethoscope and did my own exam on her.)

IVF with ICSI gave me my beautiful daughter. Science is pretty awesome. God is the ultimate planner. Why my husband and I had to go with science to have our daughter, while others are able to get pregnant without assistance. I don’t know. But I can tell you this. I wouldn’t change it.

It took medicine to get her here. It took medicine to get her out. This girl will defiantly be moving mountains.

Alright friends I figured I better update. I’m still pregnant. I “dropped” probably two weeks ago. My most bothersome symptoms are: heartburn, poor sleep, and flipping side to side during the night and momentarily feeling like a turtle on its back. I have otherwise felt great. Minimal if any swelling which in of itself is amazing when it has been so stinking hot in Minnesota. So anyway here some pictures from the recent weeks:) they aren’t labeled. I have been slacking.

I have a theme with this is blog… basically don’t expect me to make updates often but when they come they will be fabulous… Ok maybe not but this space is for me.

So since I am obviously terrible at updating weekly on how I am doing with pregnancy I will do a bulk update.

I have nothing to complain about being pregnant. There are many couples trying to achieve pregnancy that are going through more than my husband and I did. Yes we did IVF, yes our first transfer was a failure. We had success with our FET. Both times we transferred 2 blastocysts. I am currently 33 weeks and 4 days pregnant with our little jumping bean. I have felt great the majority of this pregnancy. I had a wicked sinus infection that has finally gotten better, I pee my pants when I cough or sneeze unless I am ready for it. Other than that pregnancy has been pretty dang easy for me. Of coarse I have the normal third trimester aches/ pains/ exhaustion but, I am so thankful that I am pregnant that I find it unbelievable. I have truly enjoyed being pregnant.

I have had a couple lovely showers in honor of Baby F. I am not panicking as much as I was a couple weeks ago about not being ready. Yes, I still have a lot to do in terms of is our home ready for baby, but it is trivial things. I have a car seat, which means I can actually take baby home from the hospital. I have 0-3 month onesies and gender neutral clothes (we still need to pick out an outfit for each gender to bring baby home in). I have diapers, wipes, swaddlers, and all my nursery furniture. We’re good. I do have one more small shower before baby comes that is actually tomorrow on the 4th of July at an annual family picnic. I will likely have another shower in honor of baby after baby comes. (It gives my MIL an excuse to have a party, but allows her to procrastinate… Oh and “EVERYONE” wants to know the sex of the baby before they buy anything) Oye…

Things happening around the house. Basically everything that needs to happen. We dug and placed footings for our small deck yesterday and today we will be working on the platform. YAY! Now we will be able to use our patio door off of our bedroom 🙂

Here are some pictures from the last several weeks of my belly. Soon I will post some of my maternity pictures we took